


Codex Entry

by debtdoctor



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Codex Entry (Dragon Age), Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Grey Wardens, Loghain Dies, Post-Dragon Age II, Post-Dragon Age: Origins, The Calling, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7186298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debtdoctor/pseuds/debtdoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A well read letter dated 9:40 Dragon, and written in a sloppy hand. Found in in the Denerim Royal Palace.</p><p>------<br/>I have a lot of feelings about Wardens experiencing their Calling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Codex Entry

To His Majesty Alistair Therin, King of Ferelden:

 

I’m “dispensing with the pleasantries”. Or that’s what the shem seneschal told me to open with, still not sure what it means. ~~Still think you made me a noble just to be a turd.~~

Apparently I can’t call the king a turd, even if he is being one. Fucking politics.  


I was talking with some of my recruits, and the one of them reminded me of something you said.

“It’s an honor, being a Grey Warden.”  
I imagined you.  
“It’s not an honor,” I told her. “It’s a Calling.”

And I think that’s the difference between you and me, yeah? I never wanted this. ~~Being pulled into some “great, ancient order, destined to protect the people at great cost to themselves”?~~

I’m here because I killed someone important, and it was either this or the gallows.

There’s a reason, Alistair, that the Wardens take from anywhere. A reason we search out the condemned, unwanted, and forgotten. The Blighted.

 

It’s because being a Warden is a death sentence.  
We conscript those who are already dead.

 

It’s not an honor. It’s a Calling.

I was supposed to hang. I was supposed to die ten years ago, Alistair. I was _never_ supposed to get married. I was supposed to claw my way out of a shem castle with ~~my cousi~~ nobody at my back, and fight until the arl’s rapist son bled out at my feet. And then I was to be arrested. Tortured. They’d dock my ears, rape me, beat me, pull out my toenails, and break every bone in my hands.

And then they’d hang me, leave me to rot as an example of what happens to elves who fight back.

 

I died the day Duncan conscripted me. And so did you.

And Loghain died the day I conscripted him.

The Blights were never meant to be. Wardens exist only as a means to correct the mistakes of some Tevinter robes from Ages ago, and when that last Archdemon dies, and the last Warden goes with it? We’ll be forgotten and erased, just as if we’d died when we were supposed to all along.

We died in our Joinings, and everything that happens after? We’ve been Called to do.

It’s not an honor to die for a people that will never remember me.

 

I’m not sure if you ever knew what some of the older Wardens must have been going through. You said Duncan was beginning to hear his Calling.

If that’s all he told you, he spared you some nasty shit.

 

I started hearing it, Alistair. The song. The Call. It’s why I’m leaving. It’s too early, and it’s _wrong_. I feel it settling in my joints, notes fumbling my hands when I work and when I train my recruits.

I taught a corpse the proper way to hold a sword, how to compensate for fingers that bend too easy, the wrong way, or not enough. It wasn't hard.

It’s not the Fade I’ve been traveling to at night, and I can’t hide the way I hum in the mornings. I can’t lie to Zev anymore. Or you. Oghren understands, has known for weeks, I’m sure. He sees the signs of someone running from themselves all too easy.

If you ever hear from Sten, ~~or Arishok or whatever he’s calling himsel~~  tell him I miss him. And if I don’t come back, it was because I did my duty. Tell Leliana I wish I could have told her myself. I retell her stories sometimes, hold them as tight as the ones my mother told me of her people. My people. ~~Zevran and I have started arguing the details of who’s recollections are righ~~

Sorry.

 

I’m going to try to fix it.  
I’m hoping that since you weren’t up there, on top of the tower with me, that whatever it is the Archdemon exposed me to isn’t hastening your Calling too. ~~If that’s even what started this.~~

Don’t give in. It’s a nasty death, the Blight.  
Don’t listen to its Call. It’s no honor.

 

~~With love,~~

~~Respectfully yours,~~

WITH **LOVE** _,_

Kallain Tabris  
Warden-Commander of Ferelden  
Arlessa of Amaranthine  
Hero of the Fifth Blight  
  
~~PS seneschal keeps telling me I can’t sign a letter to the king “with love”- what kind of bullshit~~


End file.
